Lowest Power Consumption for Decent Dual Channel in Parking

[DaddyofTwo]

Hi

Just sold my car which had a Thinkware F750 with a rear camera hardwired on it (couldn't be bothered to remove it as was getting frustrated with the constant "Format Data Card for Data Integrity" welcome greeting - I now have a large collection of SD cards of various makes in vain attempts to use a larger than 32gb non Thinkware SD).

I want to get a new dual channel for my new car. I use it pretty much every day but often only for 30 min journeys and it is left on the street. So yes I know that getting a decent parking mode solution is going to be difficult.

But the Thinkware always turned off after 15 minutes even with the battery full and on the lowest voltage setting - thereby making Parking Mode worthless. (Except for the one time when I caught a driver reversing his pick up into me as I returned to the car in the supermarket!!).

I now have an E Class 350d - so a chunky battery, but then again my old car was a Jag 2.2d so also a big battery and the F750 destroyed that in a few minutes of parking mode. How long am I likely to get before the system shuts down. Or am I still wasting my time even thinking about parking mode? (This all seems so silly when I believe that my mobile phone would go for ages on video mode when it has a physically tiny battery and has to power a screen. Also I am puzzled that so few reviewers seem to address this issue - am I missing something?).

My understanding is that:
1. Batteries won't work for me as they are not only expensive but take 90 mins to recharge and then only give about 12-24 hours unless one buys a stack of them. (And I am not going to muck around with recharging power packs every day at home, schlep lead batteries into my car, or point a CCTV from my house onto the car)
2. Nextbase's 522gw can go a long time on incident only mode - but takes 3 seconds to boot up. Does this that it is useless in practice?
3. Any camera below 1080p front or rear is a waste of time as it doesn't catch UK number plates.
4. A decent night vision is very nice but is secondary if the dashcam is not recording as the battery is dead.

Been looking at the IROAD x9, Viofo A129 (V2 or V3) and Thinkware F800 (does this also only work with mega expensive Thinkware SD cards??).

So my question is which decent two channel has the lowest power draw in parking mode - either:
a) 1 sec frame rate,
b) or buffered motion / impact
Sound is definitely not required.

 

[Nigel]

1. If you drive 1 hour per day then a standard car battery should give 24 hours parking mode, with a large battery you should do rather better since it will charge faster than a small battery, if you have an AGM battery as used for stop-start systems then you can probably halve that time although you should use a lower cutoff voltage.

2. Unless you have a recording of the collision then you have no evidence, audio only is often good enough. Video of someone driving away from your car is not evidence that it was them that did it.

3. Correct, for UK plates 720 (HD) is inadequate, 1080 (FHD) is adequate, 2K (QHD) is generally the best at present, 4K (OHD) is great in sunshine but in a UK winter the 2K will normally win.

4. Night vision doesn't increase power consumption, 2K doesn't seem to make much difference over 1080 either, currently 4K uses nearly double although that may change soon. Some dashcams are better than others, but if it is actually recording then the differences are not great, most of the efficiencies are only when the camera is sleeping!

So my question is which decent two channel has the lowest power draw in parking mode - either:
a) 1 sec frame rate,
b) or buffered motion / impact
Sound is definitely not required.

I don't think there is much difference in power draw between the recommended two channel dashcams, other factors are more important.

The Viofo A129 has low bitrate parking mode which is my preference.

Sound definitely is desirable, it has 360 degree coverage, a 2 channel camera only has around 200 degrees coverage, that leaves 160 not covered, and even the bits that are covered can be hard to show that a scratch was due to contact from a particular car/person, the sound will hear the scratch giving proof. Timelapse almost never has audio, low bitrate does, and uses similar bitrates.

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[Nigel]

(This all seems so silly when I believe that my mobile phone would go for ages on video mode when it has a physically tiny battery and has to power a screen. Also I am puzzled that so few reviewers seem to address this issue - am I missing something?).

I think you will find that if your phone is actually recording then the internal battery will not last long, and if you plug it into your car battery while recording then it will not last much longer than a dashcam. Phones are very good at power saving by turning bits off when they are not being used, but if you are actually recording continuously then it will be using power.

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Hi Nigel

Many thanks indeed for your so full and helpful response. So you are basically saying that I should be okay with any of them for nearly 12 hours (car has an AGM battery just looked it up) but you recommend / like the A129.

Any ideas why I got such bad life with Thinkware F750? I would literally say be in the car fiddling around for 5 mins and hear "System Shutting Down for Power" even after I had a new battery and that wasn't an AGM. Voltage level was set to the minimum 11.5V?? and there were no recordings after it shut down. All the motion incidents would be in the first 15 mins after stopping.

Gary

 

[jokiin]

old car was probably CAN-BUS, if it turned off at exactly 15 minutes regardless of battery health or voltage it's likely the circuit was controlled by the ECU

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Incidentally the insurance were happy without the sound in my car park incident. But it was quite a whack as you could see the car shake a bit so I don't think that there was any possibility of denying it

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Right oh. Just typed in CAN BUS and Jaguar and there are Google entries. How do I know if my Merc will have this? Or is this something that a professional installer can get around?

 

[jokiin]

your Merc will have it, it can still be done, just need to make sure it's wired to an appropriate circuit, your old Thinkware was not that power hungry and would have easily given many hours of parking mode if wired correctly

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Oh dear. Should have stripped it from the old car.

But then again it never worked for me without a Thinkware SD card - which are £60 for 64gb on eBay and so a 128gb is probably the same price as a less "chatty" new A129 and as previously mentioned I now have a good collection of Thinkware "compatible" SD cards. : )

Cheers

 

[Nigel]

but you recommend / like the A129.

I like the A129, but it is a midrange dashcam and isn't perfect so doesn't exactly match your car, so it is up to you to decide.

You should probably have kept the F750, it is still considered a good camera, but the Thinkware cameras do have issues with cards.

This sort of puts the A129 in context with the Thinkware cameras, although the U1000 doesn't seem to be in favor by people using it as opposed to those selling it!

 

[DaddyofTwo]

PS can I post footage without breaking the forum rules

 

[Nigel]

PS can I post footage without breaking the forum rules

As long as it is not an advert, and even then it would probably be OK if you are not a manufacturer/seller.

 

[DaddyofTwo]

It's an 8 year old E Class - and mid range sounds good. Don't want somebody breaking into the car to steal the top of the range dashcam

 

[Nigel]

It's an 8 year old E Class - and mid range sounds good. Don't want somebody breaking into the car to steal the top of the range dashcam

Well I don't recommend any 8 year old dashcam that would actually match, and you should hide the camera behind the mirror anyway, so maybe you shouldn't worry

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Oh well - get error saying file too large when trying to attach. Anyway you can take my word that the footage was pretty convincing and is the reason why I want a new dashcam

 

[Nigel]

Oh well - get error saying file too large when trying to attach. Anyway you can take my word that the footage was pretty convincing and is the reason why I want a new dashcam

Upload it to Youtube and then link it in, that is what almost everybody does...

 

[DaddyofTwo]

Many thanks. I will look at the best dashcam video - all 41 mins of it

 

[WinWiz]

Right oh. Just typed in CAN BUS and Jaguar and there are Google entries. How do I know if my Merc will have this? Or is this something that a professional installer can get around?

Run a fused wire directly from the battery to the dashcam and rest assured that no fancy electrics will disconnect the power.
Use a decent gauge wire through the factory grommet in the firewall and the voltage drop will be minimal compared to the tiny wimpy stock wires.
Less voltage drop equals less energy wasted as heat.

 

[jokiin]

Run a fused wire directly from the battery to the dashcam and rest assured that no fancy electrics will disconnect the power.

in some Euro cars that is still a problem, the computer detects a battery drain that doesn't belong to the vehicle and it throws a code as a result